


Destiny Knows Better

by Polska_1999



Series: Sprint Towards Blackout (Happy Steve Bingo 2018) [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 00:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16074950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polska_1999/pseuds/Polska_1999
Summary: When Steve woke up after the ice with a new soulmark, and one that offended him no less, he made it his personal promise to hate the person that the universe chose to replace Bucky. Shame that the universe didn’t quite get the memo.





	Destiny Knows Better

**Author's Note:**

> For the _Enemies to Friends to Lovers_ square on my **Happy Steve Bingo** card.

_ Who the hell is Bucky? _

When Steve woke up in the next century, one of the things he realized very quickly was that his soulmark had changed. There was little to no sign of the  _ You okay there, punk? _ phrase that had graced the skin on his left wrist since he was a kid, the phrase that had been dark and rich until The Train and then became faded and washed-out afterwards. Now, there was no trace of the previous words, as if they never existed — as if his soulmate had never existed.

Looking at the words, Steve swore to himself that he would hate the person who dared say that to him, the person the universe thought was good enough to replace the Bucky-shaped hole seared into Steve’s heart. Fuck the universe, fuck whatever higher being decided this. Steve was willing to face God and flip him off and walk backwards into hell if it meant being with Bucky instead of with whatever dipstick the universe expected Steve to love, whatever dipstick dared to try loving Steve without knowing who Steve’s heart truly belonged to. (Of course, that was a statement meant only for comparison, for Bucky would never be in hell. He’d be one of those angels in heaven, with fluffy white wings that could catch him from a fall next time Steve failed to do so again.)

* * *

Between adjusting to the modern world and fighting actual honest-to-god aliens, the hatred of the changed soulmark slipped to the back of Steve’s mind for some time. He found that keeping busy was good. It meant he couldn’t focus on romance because he was preoccupied, and since he wasn’t interested in dating, he likely wouldn’t meet his asshole of a soulmate. 

Or so he thought. 

One day, while helping clear rubble after the Battle of New York (God, had that really been a month ago? The city was still a ruin…), he must have hallucinated something. It wasn’t unlikely, actually — he hadn’t slept in four days by then, working non-stop on helping the clean-up efforts and ignoring his teammates’ attempts to convince him to get some rest. But, as he went around to the other side of a building to start working on removing some rubble on a side street to make it easier for the crews to get their excavators and other machines through to the area, he saw a person standing there, examining the damage. Sure, the hair was off, as were a ton of other features, but for a moment, Steve swore he could recognize the profile of the person as they simply stared at the damage, one hand in their pocket and the other hanging limply at their side. 

The word, the name, slipped out past his lips before he could prevent it. If he were properly awake, he wouldn’t have made that mistake; even if he did, he would have ran to avoid hearing the answer. But alas, he was exhausted and barely able to think (which was part of his goal) and only later would he ultimately realize that his attempts to avoid his soulmate created a self-fulfilling prophecy to cause him to meet his soulmate. After all, the universe probably expected him to resist, and he played right into it. 

“Bucky?”

The stranger turned their head to look at him, steel eyes sharper than vibranium daggers. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Steve felt the mark on his left wrist burn.

* * *

He hated the guy. He really, really, really did. (Or so he tried to tell himself.)

But, at the end of the day, he also refused to allow a clearly homeless person to lay down among the rubble left by the Battle of New York without a roof over their head. Just because the universe decided to send this guy to Steve as a big fat “fuck you” didn’t mean that Steve was going to ignore someone who needed help. He hadn’t been raised to be a spoiled brat, after all; if anything, he survived off the generosity of others a lot of the time. 

Steve originally offered to help the man get to a homeless shelter, but the man had simply shaken his head, clenching his grip on the backpack he wore, and Steve pretty quickly realized that the bag probably contained his only possessions and that someone — potentially at a homeless shelter — had tried to steal that from him in the past. In the end, Steve’s tired brain decided, considering that he never heard of any incidents where someone got butchered in their sleep by their soulmate, to invite this homeless man into his home, offering him a temporary place to stay until they could figure out a more permanent solution.

Or, well, it was meant to be a temporary situation, anyways. 

Problem was, Steve began to notice things about the man that were making it more and more difficult for Steve to remain angry with the man’s existence. One of the most jarring moments came as they were walking alongside a cleanup site, where something malfunctioned with one of the excavators and caused a bunch of rubble to fall from the excavator’s claw and slam down onto the pavement a little ways away from them. No one was hurt, although the sound did make Steve jump slightly. But the stranger? He practically almost jumped out of his skin and began panicking, immediately alert while his breathing also became erratic. 

Steve recognized the signs of a panic attack and got to work with calming the man down, voice slipping into his Captain America tone that seemed to often work in getting people to listen. It wasn’t easy to get him to calm down, but eventually it worked out. After that, Steve sped up the pace, wanting to get the man out of there. Part of him wondered if this was a homeless veteran, someone who returned to their country after a war only to end up cast out onto the streets. He looked rather frail — did he eat enough, if at all, while hiding among the wreckage?

* * *

It was later, inside Steve’s apartment, that Steve noticed the man’s prosthetic. Steve had been going to grab some food, choosing whatever was probably safest given that the man had been silent about his food preferences when asked. When he returned with a plate of food, the man had taken his hand out of his pocket, and that was when Steve saw it — a metal arm, clearly high-tech, stretching out from beneath the sleeve of his jacket. Steve did his best to not react to it, not wanting to make the man feel more ostracized.

Steve was pretty sure that part of his heart had been chipped away when he saw how defensive the man was as he ate the food. If there was anything in the world that could be considered “defensively eating,” then this was it. 

Maybe the universe wasn’t being completely cruel to Steve. Maybe it was just… testing him. Steve lost his soulmate, and now the universe decided to give him someone who needed his help instead. Maybe this wasn’t the romantic sort of soulmate situation; perhaps this was the universe telling Steve to take care of this person, to not fuck up, to not allow another person to fall. 

Steve didn’t back down from a challenge.

* * *

Having someone to come home to proved to be a blessing. Steve’s semi-permanent guest — Yasha, he eventually introduced himself as to Steve — had a rather thick Russian accent, forgot how to speak English on his worse days, had terrible nightmares that could probably make demons cry, was terrified of the shower stall, did sweeps of the apartment when nervous, and seldom left the apartment to begin with. Yeah, the guy had his problems, but they were working on them. Steve had suggested taking the guy to a therapist, but the reaction he got… well, let’s just say Steve knew better than try to force someone to go to therapy. If someone didn’t want to get better, then they wouldn’t. Besides, given the guy’s trust issues, standard therapy would not work well, and he seemed to slowly heal while staying with Steve, likely largely in part due to having a safe place to sleep and a steady supply of food. 

Steve never really mentioned Yasha’s existence to anyone else, but the team noticed that something was different about Steve anyways. Several of his teammates asked him how his therapy was going and other similar questions, assuming that Steve managed to find someone capable of helping him. Steve never bothered correcting them, not really wanting to have to explain about his soulmark and why he was keeping an otherwise homeless guy as a roommate. 

On Steve’s worse days, Steve ended up incredibly thankful for Yasha’s presence. The guy never talked much, but he always listened, letting Steve rant and vent his frustrations at the world. Sometimes, when Steve needed a distraction, Yasha would teach him how to do things like throw a knife or use some modern technology that Steve was still unfamiliar with despite having been out of the ice for months. 

After two months of being together, Steve noticed that Yasha fell into a small schedule. Whenever Steve went on a longer mission. Yasha would leave the apartment at some point; sometimes he was back when Steve returned, sometimes not. However, he would always come back with something, be it a small suitcase or a new bag. For the next few weeks after that, Steve would find random gifts scattered around the apartment that he knew were from Yasha. (The amount of art supply gifts surged after Yasha found one of Steve’s sketchbooks.)

Steve had left behind a lot when he crashed the plane in the Arctic, but for the first time since he woke up in the wrong century, it seemed that maybe things might finally be looking up for him.

* * *

A year passed, then some more months. Steve had moved to an apartment in DC to be closer to SHIELD’s headquarters at the Triskelion, and Yasha moved with him, despite likely having gained his balance in life enough to live on his own. Steve knew it was almost selfish of him, but he genuinely felt relief when Yasha declared that Steve was a moron if he expected Yasha to leave willingly. Yasha still mostly kept to himself, but there was something about his presence that helped calm Steve on even the worst days. 

The hole in Steve’s heart that had formed in the 40s remained, but it was beginning to scab over and form a scar instead of remaining as a gaping wound, and along with it, Steve considered the possibility of letting himself love someone again after all. He wouldn’t be replacing Bucky, not by any means; he’d forever remember Bucky. He’d just also learn to love another so that he wouldn’t spend the rest of however long he had left alone. (He could practically hear Bucky’s jabs about how Steve just had to be a punk and wallow in his self-suffering and help others without caring for himself.)

Maybe the universe gave Steve a new soulmate not to make him suffer but to help him adjust. (He wished that the universe would have at least allowed him to keep the old soulmark, too. Just as a sentimental thing for his memory.)

Speaking of soulmarks, he knew he probably should have brought up the topic with Yasha by now, but somehow he always found himself unable to, always deciding in the end that “maybe next time” it would happen.

While in DC, Steve made a new friend — a veteran and counselor at the VA by the name of Sam Wilson, a man who happens to have a hobby similar to Steve’s, which involved jogging laps at ungodly early hours of the morning. Steve liked him; he was a good friend to talk too, plus he was up much earlier than Yasha. (Steve’s roommate had a habit of not sleeping until 4 AM and then sleeping until past noon. The term sleeping was used loosely due to nightmares, but even those became less frequent as time went on.)

Things were going well for a little while. Whenever Steve ate home-cooked meals, they were usually made by Yasha, given that Steve had the cookings skills appropriate for burning water and setting an apartment on fire while making scrambled eggs. Yasha remained paranoid of eating food he didn’t get or make himself, but he seemed to be slowly accepting eating takeout. Overall, Steve thought he was doing rather well, that both he and Yasha were improving and adjusting to their lives. 

Then, one evening, Steve was about to enter his apartment when he heard something odd — music. Sure, he had a roommate, but Yasha never listened to music much, so unless Yasha had a sudden change of heart and decided that he liked music from Steve’s era, then someone had broken in and set the radio on as a cover. Worry immediately flared within Steve for his friend (his second soulmate), and Steve chose to enter the apartment through the window and grab his shield before confronting the intruder. 

Fast forward a bit, and Nick Fury got shot in Steve’s apartment and gave Steve a flash drive with his dying breath. 

Steve ran after the assassin, putting his full strength into his muscles as he sprinted faster and faster to catch up. His ears did not register the distant gunshot as it went off, but a moment later, the figure he was chasing suddenly crumpled to the ground. Steve skidded to a stop at the figure’s side and found that they had an entry wound on their back and an exit wound on their front, the bullet having gone clean through the heart. Nick Fury’s assassin was assassinated, but who caused the assassination of the assassin? 

Things went on a whole new level when Steve found the HYDRA badge on the assassin’s body; after that, everything zoomed by so fast that Steve barely had time to process things. 

The hospital. The flash drive. Pierce. The elevator. Natasha. The Apple store. Camp Lehigh. Zola. The missile. Sam.

It was only in the safety of Sam’s home that Steve finally had the chance to push aside Captain America’s priorities and worry about Yasha. He hadn’t seen the man since before finding Fury in his apartment and could only hope that he was doing okay. Maybe he got spooked and ran; tragic as it sounded, Steve knew that this was also likely the best-case scenario. Even if Yasha wound up on the streets again, it meant he was alive, that he wasn’t involved, and that Steve could find him again once this entire mess was over. 

The words of Steve’s soulmark were still dark and rich, giving Steve the comfort of knowing that Yasha was still alive out there somewhere and hopefully doing well. 

Sam offered Nat and Steve his help, revealing that he wasn’t a pilot after all but instead had been part of the military’s testing of the EXO-7 FALCON prototypes. He was willing to return to the fighting if it meant helping Captain America save the country, willing to follow him just as the Howlies had followed their Captain decades ago. 

(Along the way, Steve also learned that Sam had a soulmate that he lost, too — Riley. However, unlike how Steve’s soulmark had become washed out when Bucky fell, Sam’s had instead scarred over and left a mark that caused for the original words to become illegible.)

Things were going better, they got information out of Sitwell about Zola’s algorithm and were on their way to SHIELD to use their captive agent as an entrance into the building… and then they got swarmed by dozens upon dozens of SHIELD units, and after a long battle that the Avengers eventually inevitably lost, Rumlow’s STRIKE team only hesitated from killing them on sight due to the presence of news helicopters over the scene. So instead, STRIKE threw them into the back of a van and drove off, planning to kill them and dump their bodies in a spot that no one would ever find. 

Then Maria Hill and other allied agents saved them. In perfect timing, too — a few moments late and they would have gotten caught in a giant crash of SHIELD SUVs that later somehow caused several explosions as well. 

It turned out that Fury was actually still alive and had a plan for how to prevent Project Insight from killing millions of people. Steve declared that they needed to flush out HYDRA’s parasitical growth within SHIELD, which involved destroying the organization itself… and people around him listened, even if this plan was as insane as ziplining onto a speeding enemy train. 

Things seemed to be going smoothly at first, an two of three helicarriers had their targeting chips swapped. At least, things had been going smoothly until an entire squad of HYDRA operatives managed to catch a distracted Captain America while his back was turned to them. The cause of distraction? A sudden burn in his soul mark, a signal that his soulmate was in distress. 

Only two or three bullets actually managed to hit Steve before every single member of that attacking team ended up with a bullet through their brain. Steve didn’t notice that immediately, of course; he only noticed that they stopped shooting. He staggered towards the control deck to insert the chip and complete his mission when someone grabbed his arm… and then swung it around a pair of strong shoulders, ones capable of supporting Steve and help him get to where he needed to be. Steve didn’t even need to look up to know who was helping him. 

They got shot at again while escaping, and Steve could only do his best to protect them with his shield while Yasha unloaded several clips of pure bullet-shaped metal fury on HYDRA asshats with a perfect accuracy that Steve would admire if he wasn’t currently bleeding like a gutted pig. He tightened his grip on Yasha and could practically feel his soulmate’s worry. They stumbled towards the edge of the helicarrier, but it seemed that Steve’s comm was down, giving them no way to contact the others. 

The helicarriers began firing at one another. 

“Don’t think I’m gonna make it, pal,” Steve admitted quietly.

“Don’t say that,” Yasha snapped, desperation and anger as audible in his voice as they were visible in his eyes. “You will make it, Stevie. I swear.”

“Yasha—” Steve’s words got cut off by a sudden kiss, one fueled by adrenaline and worry and who knows what else. 

“I’m not letting you die on me.” There was a slight growl that accompanied those words, although Steve almost missed it. The blood loss was making him light-headed. 

“Go, you can save yourself and…” 

“Not without you!” Yasha sounded both furious and terrified. If Steve was thinking straight, maybe he could have realized that those words sounded familiar. Unfortunately, his brain wasn’t working properly, and suddenly the floor beneath them shifted, causing Steve to fall out of Yasha’s grip and into the Potomac River below. 

His last conscious memory was a metal arm reaching for him through the water and dragging him to safety.

* * *

When Steve woke up in the hospital, he was told that he was found on the banks of the Potomac, alone and barely alive. When he asked about Yasha, no one recognized the name; not even Sam had seen anyone by that name, and Sam had been a total blessing and waited the entire time for Steve to wake up. It drove Steve a little insane, and it definitely made Sam worry for him. (Oops.)

The only solace the universe offered Steve was the clear, bold writing on his wrist.  _ “Who the hell is Bucky?” _ Steve had long since learned that the question was his fault as a result of a case of mistaken identity; thus, he learned to not hate his second soulmate as much anymore. In fact, assuming that the kiss he remembered wasn’t just a hallucination or adrenaline talking… maybe he would be okay if they became more than friends. 

It was only after visiting hours, after Sam left and the sun has set and the nurses stopped checking in on him insistently, that the window to Steve’s hospital room slid open from its slightly ajar position. Steve was getting ready to attempt to fight or call the guards when a shiny mismatched arm reflected the brilliant gleam of the moonlight. At that, Steve’s muscles loosened, tension fading as defensiveness was replaced with relief. “Yasha…” he sighed, glad that he wasn’t going insane, that the man he had spent over a year caring for was not just a hallucination.

Yasha slipped in through the window and moved silently to Steve’s bedside, muttering in affectionately angry Russian. It seemed that today was a Bad Day, a day when English failed him, but that was okay. Steve knew what he was saying; it wasn’t hard to guess. The supersoldier cracked a stupid grin, which earned him some more affectionate swearing before Yasha reached over and dragged his fingers through Steve’s hair. Something had changed between them as a result of the helicarrier incident, although if it was for better or worse, Steve didn’t know yet.

Yasha stayed the entire night, hiding under the bed like a little kid whenever a nurse or guard entered to check in on Steve. He was never caught, for which Steve was thankful, but the sun soon began to rise, and Steve knew that Yasha would need to leave soon.

“Yasha?” Steve called quietly after another visiting nurse finally left the room. Yasha appeared at Steve’s side again in record time, listening and ready, and Steve continued with a small smile. “When you kissed me, on the helicarrier… did you mean it?”

Yasha tensed up at first, but then nodded after a moment, saying what must have been confirmation in Russian.

“Can I get another kiss before you leave?”

And he did.

* * *

“So,” Natasha began, sitting across from Steve and making herself comfortable. “Your soulmate. How is he?”

Steve almost asked how she knew but then remembered that this was Natasha. “Good.”

“What’s his name?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know it yet.”

She shrugged. “He’s tricky.”

“He’s not a threat, Natasha.”

“He could be.”

“Nat…”

“How long have you lived with him, Rogers?”

“Since a month after New York. I  _ know _ he’s not a threat.”

“He could be a very good long-term actor.”

“He isn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that.”

“Steve, he kept himself off of SHIELD’s radar for at least the two years he was living with you. I haven’t even seen him for myself. No one has, except you. If not for your soulmark and you getting pulled out of the river, I would have doubted he existed in the first place and wasn’t just a figment of your imagination, or maybe an after-effect of all the magic the team had to defend against.”

“Just because you haven’t seen him doesn’t mean you can just say that he’s automatically dangerous.”

“Given who I am and who we are? Yes, I can.”

“ _ Yasha _ would never—”

Natasha froze for a split second, and Steve realized he made a mistake. 

“So his name is Yasha.”

“Nat…”

She rose suddenly. “I have to go.” With that, she left.

* * *

Steve was in the Smithsonian, having gone because Yasha was busy doing something and Steve did not want to be home alone. He was looking at the exhibit about himself and the Howling Commandos and constantly rewatching the clip of himself and Bucky, when Natasha popped up at his side. She spoke for a bit about the Winter Soldier, an assassin that was highly prolific assassin with a metal arm but then disappeared in 2008 and was listed as killed in an Afghan cave where he was being stored, according to HYDRA’s files, and Steve mostly didn’t pay her words too much attention due to how focused he was on the clip that was playing and replaying overhead, until— 

“Steve, Yasha is Russian for James.”

Just like that, a single sentence brought down Steve’s entire world. He may or may not have almost fainted at his own Smithsonian exhibit.

* * *

“You… you don’t hate me?” Yasha looked up at Steve cautiously, his muscles trembling slightly. 

“I could never hate you, Yasha.” Steve reached out carefully, not touching until given permission. Yasha gave a small nod of his head, and Steve placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I know I’m not the guy you remember, but… could you call me Bucky? It… it feels more familiar now, even if it feels like it was a lifetime ago…”

“Of course, Buck.”

Maybe their soulmarks were different now. Maybe they themselves were different now, too. But on the end, the were still Steve and Bucky — still meant to be together. 

Steve pulled Bucky in for a hug, not minding when Bucky clung to him with a vice grip that was bound to leave bruises later. He whispered a small reassurance to Bucky.

“I’m with you till the end of the line.”

“Sap.”

“Jerk.”

“Punk.”

All was back to normal, or at least beginning to form a new semblance of normalcy. the universe seemed to sigh in relief as it reached a balanced equilibrium.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! I am participating in the **Happy Steve Bingo** event and will be attempting to go for a blackout bingo; thus, I plan on filling all 25 squares of my card — that means, get ready for as many as 25 fics total featuring our favorite (if a bit self-sacrificial) supersoldier!
> 
> Most of my works, including this one, are beta-read by the one and only amazingly wonderful [SpaceKeet!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceKeet/pseuds/SpaceKeet) If you get the chance, go out and give her some love!
> 
> This is the longest work of the set! It took a while to write and took on a life of its own. The prompt was very loosely interpreted, but I think it turned out okay in the end. I also wanted to add in a soulmate aspect because why not, and I decided that hey, maybe I should try making a slightly different AU on the Winter Soldier scenario. Let me know what you guys think!
> 
> As always, thank you all so much for reading! If you liked it, feel free to drop a kudos or comment if you have something you want to say. Wanna contact me? You can find me on [Tumblr](https://polska-1999.tumblr.com/) or ask me for my Discord in the comments.


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